As AI reshapes how marketing teams work, the fundamentals matter more than ever. Matt sits down with guest Ann Hoeger, a fractional CMO and change management leader, to unpack why better briefs, clearer roles, and stronger agency relationships lead to better creative work. Ann shares what she has learned across CPG, B2B, private equity, innovation, and brand-building environments. She explains why great marketing starts with clarity: knowing your customer, defining success, assigning roles, and building enough trust to solve problems when the work gets messy. What you’ll learn in this episode: - Why a strong brief acts like a contract between a client and agency - How unclear roles create friction across teams and agency partners - Why “clarity is kindness” when managing multiple agencies or consultants - How AI is changing the briefing process and raising the bar for human judgment Check out Ann on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/in/annhoeger/
As AI reshapes how marketing teams work, the fundamentals matter more than ever. Matt sits down with guest Ann Hoeger, a fractional CMO and change management leader, to unpack why better briefs, clearer roles, and stronger agency relationships lead to better creative work.
Ann shares what she has learned across CPG, B2B, private equity, innovation, and brand-building environments. She explains why great marketing starts with clarity: knowing your customer, defining success, assigning roles, and building enough trust to solve problems when the work gets messy.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Why a strong brief acts like a contract between a client and agency
- How unclear roles create friction across teams and agency partners
- Why “clarity is kindness” when managing multiple agencies or consultants
- How AI is changing the briefing process and raising the bar for human judgment
Check out Ann on LinkedIn!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annhoeger/
Ann Hoeger fractional CMO, change management leader. Iowa Hawkeye. Yes. Jimmy Buffett fanatic. I worked on Margaritaville at Sea, so it was really fun. Yeah. Did you ever meet Jimmy? I did, you did? He's fantastic. You would love him. Do you have any Jimmy stories? I'm sure you don't hang out with him all the time, but what was he like?
He's great. He creates a great culture and a great environment for his brands. Like it was. It was. It's a very well oiled machine. Yeah. He does a great job setting the tone. And they have they've they have an internal team that's operationalized launching where it's like it was really cool to see the how it worked the machine.
I mean because when you think about like Margaritaville and just Jimmy Buffett, you're like, you're just wasting away. You're chillin. You're not, like, organized. Their internal team is incredibly organized. Yeah, like they do. They have anything from Hotels, to the cruise line, to food and their.
Their internal team and the lens that they look at it through and the way they execute is really incredible to see while maintaining this really cool, iconic culture. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm like, I admire the whole thing, like the music because I'm a musician, songwriter and a business owner and but I'm like way worse of a musician and way worse of a business owner because you could be the next Jimmy Buffett.
I mean, that's what I kind of want to be. Why not? So just between you and me. So maybe you can help me with that. We're going to talk about the briefing process. And you just talked about this, and I want to hear everything you've learned. But before we get there, I just would love to because you do all of these things.
And you you work with multiple different companies. What is it? It's hard for me to imagine what a day in the life of an Hager. I like a somewhat regimented day, so I get it pretty early, like 4 or 5. I like to meditate, work out, take that time. And then as far as clients, I'm on anything from like maybe a day or two long engagement with the CEO who wants me to test his marketing plans to.
I might be an advisor, like I was an OTC hearing aids where we're meeting like once a week and I'm advising the team. So it's like you get to see the best in class in B2B, like how a tech stack works. You get to see best in class in marketing and brand building and then see how are different teams operating, because I don't think people realize they're steeped in their culture.
So when you go in and out of different cultures, you get to see, oh, this really works here. I'm going to reapply that that works over there. I'm going to reapply it here. You have an interesting career. Can you maybe you can give us the quick snapshot version. You were started out as an engineer. Is that right?
Yeah. So my undergrad is in chemical engineering and undergrad. I did crystallization research and then I interned with three M, which was more operations crystallization research. That sounds like like magical, like crystals. Yeah. Is that what I'm. Am I thinking about the right thing? Yes. And so you're watching crystals grow and like analyzing it.
Then I interned with GM for a year in operations and I was like, oh, I like the operations business side of it better than working in a lab. So I've worked in innovation for advertising agencies and then like the last 4 or 5 years, more private equity. So it's like a really cool range. And to see how these different groups are applying.
And then it's cool from the briefing process discussion today to see how is it done on the client side. So I think if you're at P&G, they have a very tight briefing process. And with that that's your contract with the agency. And you get much better creative. And we're talking about the briefing process.
We're talking about briefing like outside consultants and agencies. Yes. So whether it's briefing white space innovation or advertising, when you have a strong brief, the recipient of that brief, whether it's an agency or white space innovation, has a clear idea of your consumer. If you really understand your consumer, you're going to get better output.
I think where it gets broken is when people I've worked on stuff the last few years where there's no briefing process and then you're just not your output isn't going to be as good. And I find it's the same with AI because some people are moving doing more with AI. I'm like, well, the better inputs you give to AI, the better your outputs are going to be.
But if you just give them a very generic prompt. Also like I find this fascinating, one of my friends just RFP at her agency and three of the four came back with exactly the same recommendations. Oh really? No. Like headline Qi bullets, like 12 pages were exactly the same. And what they presented back. Okay, so it's like if you're giving AI, it's.
So somebody probably went in and asked, what is the best way to like they each AI edit yes. Oh well okay. Would be my guess. Right, right. So they did. But that's a case of it not going well. That would be a case of it not going well because you're three of the four agencies gave exactly the same pitch back. I think it's fascinating to watch.
So. As we talked earlier, I'm in for marketing AI mastermind groups. And so the West Coast AI mastermind I'm in the stuff they're doing is incredible. Somebody just built a ten person agency all on AI. And what does the agency do? So you send the brief in and it goes to like the the strategist, the AI strategist, and then that, then that goes through the process to the copywriter and to the art.
So it's a creative agency. It's a creative agency. So I'm like, this is fascinating to watch. But then like, I was at a CMO dinner last night and somebody's like, yeah, but we're just not getting good stuff out of AI. So we were having that discussion. It's like we're not getting we're getting stuff that looks like AI and your younger consumer is a little bit more sophisticated.
So somebody at the table was targeting Gen Z. And she's like, our problem is our stuff coming out of AI turns them off. So we still need more human interaction than what we're getting with AI. So I think I'm in an AI build lab where we're building a customer service center through AI. So I think it's figuring out how do I use AI and how do I use human, and what does the integration of that look like?
Are there certain places where AI comes in and it shouldn't come in? We're going to automate repeatable tasks. So I think right now, if you're taking an image in the US that you want to replicate in 30 other countries, using AI makes a lot of sense there, right? Repeatable tasks like where can I where does.
I think so is you're like looking at how do I implement AI three six, nine months, two years, five years out? Makes sense to start a repeatable task going straight to making creative. It depends. Yeah. And it also depends whether it's a brief or whether it's AI. How will you brief. It impacts the output you're going to get.
And that's where I think it creates a huge opportunity for executives who have a lot of experience and understand how that process works beginning to end. Strongly encourage people to get in community on this. Yeah, because like when I first started using it, I'm like, how are people using this? Do I use cloud?
Do I use chat? Do I how are you building an agent. And then in the different masterminds, you see. Oh somebody walked me through hey Walmart line review. This is how I used AI. Here are the prompts that I used. I mean, obviously we've known each other a long time in this specific group, but she's like, here's exactly how I approached it.
I'm like, oh, that's cool. I never thought about using AI like that. Like, this is the biggest change management initiative of our career. It's hard. So it's like you're taking teams that worked really well here and it's like, how do I stair step to get them where I need to go? To your point, where should I be using AI?
Where should I be using people starting with repeatable tasks. Makes a lot of sense. It's interesting going back to your example of the West Coast group that like built an entire agency off of AI agents versus this other person who's not even using it on that West Coast example. Are they are there people involved, like, are they trying to completely outsource that to AI, or are they like,
00:08:05.640 — 00:08:32.640
what are they trying to accomplish? Um, the guy who built it just did it for fun over Christmas, bro. Oh, cool. Okay, cool. Good for him. He's like, I just thought I was like, that's incredible. Somebody. What is he, an AI engineer? Science. He's a CMO. He's CMO okay. So but he understands the IP. He understands AI tools.
So a lot of people in that group took the build lab that I just signed up for. So they were like, you should sign up for this build lab, which it just gives you.
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You're like, okay, not to say that I will be the one building agents in the future, but I'll understand. Here's the process that you use to go about building agents. Here's the process that you use to to manage whether it's AI, work, AI, teammates and understanding that so that as a CMO, I can do a better job guiding myself and other people through the process.
Going back to the briefing process, I guess, what does it look like? I think some people, when they don't know much about a briefing process, they might think it's a it's a document and you get all the information on the document, like people product process. Okay. So as you look at what do I need to get done in this campaign?
And you kind of look at who are the people I need involved, specifically, what skillsets do I need? You might do like a P&G. We might have 100 step RACI, which is kind of overkill. You could just drop it to five like maybe five steps. Here are the here are the skills that I need. Here's who needs to be involved.
If I if on my side, maybe I don't have somebody who understands this part of it. Can I pull from your agency? Is there somebody I can temporarily bring on site or help get through that? As you look at process, do we have the right. Do we have a briefing process? Do we have an agency counsel, which I think really makes things easier.
Yeah. So it's like it's having the higher trust you have, the better work you're going to get if there's finger points, because you can be vulnerable and you can say, hey, I don't know what I don't know, I don't know what I don't know. Hey, we're trying to figure this out. Hey, it looks like this went sideways.
I worked on a project a few years ago where we were. It was a white space innovation project. I was looking at the deck of the night before, and I'm like, man, something feels off. I can't put my finger on it. And then the chief operating officer of the meeting next morning, she's like, something feels off.
And I'm like, I agree, but we've known each other a long time. We've worked on multiple projects together. We have a 250 page deck and I'm like, I think, let's just go through this. She's like, can you fly in on Friday? I'm like, sure. We went through it. We found the spot. And like when it landed, we're like, oh, this is where it was off.
So she's like, I don't think now, I don't think we need to test it. But if we didn't trust each other, we couldn't have had that conversation. And it was like, and in the moment I'm like, I'm not sure what's off. This just isn't it's not quite right, but she and I have high degree of trust. And, hey, we've got to get this out right away.
Can you fly in this week? Of course. Then we can sit down and sort through it in person and get the key players involved. And within a day we had it sorted and back on track. So to your point, even if you don't have a good brief, if you have high level trust, you can sort through it and get to the process and the brief that you need to get there.
In terms of, you know, when there is, I think, you know, you're you have this engineering background, you have a very unique, uh, perspective and how to, like, see the world and have a framework for seeing the world and who does what. And clarity. Right. I think that can be challenging, especially with organizations maybe that have like, they've got what they've got.
They don't have the sophisticated team maybe, or they've got some people that are great or some people have come from other parts, not marketing. So they don't all have the same language even. And I think that is one of the opportunities for people like yourself and, and agencies to come in and help fill the gaps or guide them.
Right. But I think one of the things I'm interested in from your perspective is have you ever been in a situation where there are multiple sort of consultants and agencies? There's a lack of that RACI or that lack of that clarity of roles where people step over on each other's toes a little bit and try to like it's unintentional.
Like the Walmart team back in the day grew from five people to 300 people in the marketing team. The whole team. Okay. And you have a bunch of people. It's a, you know, you fly in, you're working on the team, and people have people mean to do well. Nobody is intentionally showing up to be a jerk, but you had to figure out, like, hey, in the creative process, which is marketing and what does sales and what does the what do our agency zone and then sorting through RACI and then getting the right people involved to figure out roles and responsibilities.
Everybody has the intention to drive volume. Everybody has the intention to deliver great work. It's understanding, hey, what am I strong at? What are you strong at? What is it? Where does it make sense for you to be accountable? Where should I be consulting and where should I be informing? So it's like sorting through that.
A lot of people don't want to sort through the RACI, but that gets rid of a lot of friction when you do that. So can we dig a little bit deeper on that? Because it's funny how how so much of this sort of foundational stuff to me is really what we're talking about, underlying the actual process of briefing. Yes.
It's like and do you need 100 steps the way we would do at P&G? No. Right. But even getting it down to five steps, it's like, what part do I own? What part do you own? And like getting rid of ego and personality and just sorting through roles and responsibilities makes it so much easier for everybody to engage and work together.
Well, here's the situation and I'm curious what your perspective is. So hey, let's say I'm the CMO, the marketing leader. I have multiple agencies that I love and they're great. And they some sometimes they some of them have overlap and some of their capabilities. That sort of thing. We have a couple of things that we're sort of trying.
We've even moved another agency in and we've sort of things around shuffled a little bit, but I'm not sure who could do this thing, and I'm not sure who could do this thing. And I'm kind of like, you know, that kind of leads to a little bit of lack of clarity in terms of, of where should they focus and that sort of thing.
Do you have a process for like, if I'm a CMO, sort of kind of battling that, like who should do what? Is it racy or is it something that can be racy? It can be your briefing process. It can be going through your customer journey. People are going to own this part. People are going to own that part. So I find it's like whatever works for you.
So it doesn't necessarily mean my way is the best way. It's like whatever works in that organization to sort through it. But if you leave agencies to battle or battle on an agency council, it's just it can be extremely stressful for everybody involved. Sure, it's, but clarity is kindness. Brené Brown, Brené Brown, and I'm like, it can be rough in the moment, but I'm like, clarity is kindness.
It makes it easier in everybody involved. And so what level of clarity? Just imagine you're talking to people that just don't haven't dealt with this before. You haven't done an agency like when I haven't they haven't done an agency counsel. They don't. They're like, what on earth are you talking about?
But they but they're phenomenal marketers and they've got a team. Yeah, yeah, all of that stuff. What level of clarity do you think they need to bring to a situation like that? Is it literally like, hey, look, this is exactly the list of problems I want you to focus on. This is the list of problems I want. I think it's clear.
I think it's clarity of the brief, okay. Or clarity of rules and responsibility. And do you bring that brief to the council as a whole, or do you just do you get it all sorted out per group, per internal marketing team? So I've seen it multiple ways. So I've seen it where the client runs the council, I've seen it where your AOR runs the council and I've seen it where like AOR is going to agency of record is going to present.
Here's the creative and what we're doing. And then people know and then how they connect and ladder up, how they connect and ladder up to it. But I think you briefed the individual agencies on here's what I need you to do. And then you'll have like where I've seen it work. Well, is this ABM is managing the relationship with this agency, that ABM is managing the relationship with that agency.
So it like filters all the way out. But yeah, I think clarity is helpful versus I need something done sort it out. I think it just makes it rough on everybody involved. Sure. Yeah. When we think about the that that process briefing, what are you seeing that are the you know you're seeing this for across multiple companies.
What are you seeing that needs to change. Like what are some of the patterns. Well they don't know what they don't know. So I think on the client side, it's like having a foundational understanding of your consumer, consumer, consumer if it's B2C customer, if it's B2C, B2B. So it's like really understand really, really understanding who's my target.
Understanding key insights. Understanding that person's life. Fully understanding the customer journey. Understanding what KPIs are you using to evaluate success? Understanding your funnel. So I think on the client side it's having a really clear understanding of that. So I'm seeing there are sometimes gaps on that.
Look they're not showing up with that knowledge. Yeah I've gone in where they don't have a target. What are they trying to do. We want to sell to everybody okay. So so I'm like let's be more like on the B2B side maybe. Or I've seen it on B2C too. Okay. Wow. So that's where I'm like it's both sides. So that's where I'm like, hey, hey guys.
We're going to get way better creative if we lock in. Yeah. But if you've never done targeting or customer journey or brief or any of that, you're not sure, like feels like you're narrowing down to something too specific. So it's like working with the team and saying, hey, if we narrow down to this consumer the size of price, if we get this percentage of it, the size of price, is that.
So? it's like narrowing down. I think on the advertising side, it's like, do you have the right talent? Do you have the ability to execute? Do you know? Do you know what I mean? I think it's both sides. So if you're doing people product process, do you have the right people? Is you're going through. Do you have do you have all the skill sets covered in your ecosystem?
Did you look at process? Do we have a briefing process. Do we have a process to track success. So being clear on here's what success looks like right. And then people product and product. Do you understand your product. And on the council what product are you trying to get out of the agencies. And being clear on that.
I think it's funny as you sort of lay that out, I think about certain companies we've worked with that they really do understand their product. Yep. Really. Well, that's probably not a surprise. And sometimes they understand they're the people side. But they but the process oftentimes feels like the thing that is missing.
Yeah, and I've seen it where it can be one of the three. It can be all three. It can be we're doing okay on all three. But how do we uplevel? Are you giving? If you look at people, are you giving the experiences that they need to get the skill set that they need as they're going up? So I think it's like evaluating the ecosystem and then figuring out what do I need to tweak and what do I need to improve.
So for from your dinner last night, when it comes to the briefing process, what was the biggest aha or the biggest takeaway? The thing that's kind of sticking with you. I mean, it's our discussion now. So we were talking about a lot of the CMOs have gone in and out of different environments where it's like somebody grew up with Leo Burnett and P&G and she's like, wow, I didn't realize how much you had all that knowledge, the foundational skills.
Then I go into a different industry and they just haven't thought about the product. They haven't thought about the customer. They haven't thought about the journey. They don't have a briefing process, but you have people who are trying really hard, right? And it's like, how do I help upskill these people and help them see, hey, what you've done has been very successful and here's how we can make you even more successful.
So it's kind of the range. And it was really interesting because it was a CMO dinner with women, and everybody has gone in and out of a bunch of different companies. So hearing their experiences at different companies. And then the biggest thing is, as you're trying to change that, implementing change management is really hard.
It's like, how do I bring people along with me on this journey and get them excited? And and now if you add in the complexity of AI, it's like this is the largest change management shift in our career, right? And that's how you sort of position it, right? It's change management. Nobody hires you for change management.
They don't say that. But that's what you're doing. That's what you're doing a lot of the time. That was our discussion at dinner. So somebody has a problem that needs to be fixed. They never think it's change management. They just think my marketing is not working. Go do the marketing work. Go do the marketing work.
Who knows how to do the marketing work to do the marketing work. It's a merger. Hey, it's just it's just not going well. And it's like. Did you clarify? It's not a right fit. It just didn't work out. Just didn't work out. Hey, did you clarify job descriptions for people? You have these different companies.
Everybody's trying hard. You've now merged these companies. Did you clarify what everybody's doing? Do they have they all signed up for this mission? When it relates to AI specifically, how is it changing change management? It can be a very polarizing. It's a pretty polarizing issue, I think, depending on extremely talking to.
And there's the moral side of this. There's the there's the like it's replacing people side of this. And you know, how do you sort of manage that with the fact that we're, you know, we're talking about change management. It's people. And there's a lot of people who are scared and there don't really think there's a place for it maybe, or that it's how do you approach that large conversation?
Do you approach it? Yeah. So I find that people that are completely avoiding it. It makes it harder on your team. Yeah. So it's like when I worked in a plant and we were automating. It's like, hey, the job you have today is not the job you're going to have tomorrow. And it was union plants. It's being super transparent on that.
It's like we are doubling this refinery. You're counterintuitively where your job scope is going to be double. You also now have a lot more job security. And it's like, hey, this is scary. I like change, so I'm like, I'm. And I was in my early 20s at the time. I was like, I'm really excited about this. I know not everybody else is.
I want you to go on this journey with me, but if you really don't want to do it, now is the time to opt out and bid to another department in the plant. And it's walking through like, here is what upskilling is going to look like we're going to have here. The coders are going to help you. They're going to be involved in this.
So I think it's it's less scary when you involve people in the change and you invite them to be a part of the change, then somebody's waiting, terrified on the sideline, like, I see things are going to happen. I have no idea what's going on. Yeah. So I think it's very thoughtfully walking people through it.
And they know some things and they don't know a lot of other things. They don't know everything. Even the. Yeah, even the discussion last night at our dinner was like, how are you taking your teams through? This was super helpful because otherwise you can be like, how am I supposed to lead through this? I'm trying to figure out AI.
I've got to tell somebody else how to use AI. It's like, how do I lead through this? How do I lead through, like all of the things happening? And that's where I find being in community. Do it. Dig it. Pivoting. One last question here. I ask everybody this question what is a word or phrase we should no longer use in the workplace?
What comes to mind? That's not how we did it. That's not how we like used. That's not how I do it. That's not how I used to do it. Yeah. I mean, the new phrase that I really like is the tallest. Trees have the deepest roots. If we're looking at a phrase I do like, I love that phrase because you think about, okay, we're going through a lot of change.
What do I need to be doing in my personal life so they can rise the highest and help other people. Right. I like that. Except for this tree in my front yard that just got cut down because it was leaning like this, it was really tall. It didn't have deep roots, but it didn't have deep roots. But most of them probably do have deep roots.
So it's like you make sure you reflect like, oh, what should I be doing in my personal life so they can rise the highest? What do I need to do for resilience so that I can keep myself in a good place and my team's in a good place. But I also like that. Let's stop saying that's not how we do it. Yeah, because. Or that's not how I did or that's not how you used to do, or we used to do it like this as a reason why we should do it like that, that usually that kind of like trips me up.
I kind of get like a averse reaction to that, too. It kind of feels icky. Yeah. And this has been awesome. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic, I appreciate it.